EP0280827B1 - Pitch detection process and speech coder using said process - Google Patents

Pitch detection process and speech coder using said process Download PDF

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Publication number
EP0280827B1
EP0280827B1 EP87430006A EP87430006A EP0280827B1 EP 0280827 B1 EP0280827 B1 EP 0280827B1 EP 87430006 A EP87430006 A EP 87430006A EP 87430006 A EP87430006 A EP 87430006A EP 0280827 B1 EP0280827 B1 EP 0280827B1
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EP
European Patent Office
Prior art keywords
samples
signal
pitch
value
block
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EP87430006A
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German (de)
English (en)
French (fr)
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EP0280827A1 (en
Inventor
Claude Galand
Michèle Rosso
Thierry Liethoudt
Philippe Elie
Emmanuel Lancon
Hubert Crepy
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International Business Machines Corp
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International Business Machines Corp
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Priority to EP87430006A priority Critical patent/EP0280827B1/en
Priority to ES198787430006T priority patent/ES2037101T3/es
Priority to DE8787430006T priority patent/DE3783905T2/de
Priority to JP63008601A priority patent/JP2505015B2/ja
Priority to US07/155,459 priority patent/US4924508A/en
Publication of EP0280827A1 publication Critical patent/EP0280827A1/en
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Publication of EP0280827B1 publication Critical patent/EP0280827B1/en
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    • G—PHYSICS
    • G10—MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS; ACOUSTICS
    • G10L—SPEECH ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES OR SPEECH SYNTHESIS; SPEECH RECOGNITION; SPEECH OR VOICE PROCESSING TECHNIQUES; SPEECH OR AUDIO CODING OR DECODING
    • G10L19/00—Speech or audio signals analysis-synthesis techniques for redundancy reduction, e.g. in vocoders; Coding or decoding of speech or audio signals, using source filter models or psychoacoustic analysis
    • G10L19/04—Speech or audio signals analysis-synthesis techniques for redundancy reduction, e.g. in vocoders; Coding or decoding of speech or audio signals, using source filter models or psychoacoustic analysis using predictive techniques
    • G10L19/08—Determination or coding of the excitation function; Determination or coding of the long-term prediction parameters
    • G—PHYSICS
    • G10—MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS; ACOUSTICS
    • G10L—SPEECH ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES OR SPEECH SYNTHESIS; SPEECH RECOGNITION; SPEECH OR VOICE PROCESSING TECHNIQUES; SPEECH OR AUDIO CODING OR DECODING
    • G10L25/00—Speech or voice analysis techniques not restricted to a single one of groups G10L15/00 - G10L21/00
    • G10L25/90—Pitch determination of speech signals

Definitions

  • This invention deals with methods for efficiently coding speech signals.
  • vocoder and Linear Prediction Coder are already known among which one may include so called vocoder and Linear Prediction Coder (LPC) families.
  • LPC Linear Prediction Coder
  • the vocoder family is based on deriving from the original speech signal a set of coefficients used to process the original speech signal and derive therefrom a residual signal.
  • a pitch information is then derived from the residual for voiced speech sections, otherwise the residual signal is simply made to be noise.
  • the correlative decoding process involves modulating back a synthesized pitch or noise signal by the coefficients.
  • the relative efficiency (quality versus bit rate) of such a coding scheme is rather poor unless performing a very precise determination of the pitch value. This already shows the significance of any efficient method for determining the pitch.
  • the LPC coder family provides valuable improvement to the coding/decoding operation.
  • Saving in computing complexity enables minimizing processor workload, while saving in bit rate is of major importance in voice transmission or in storage facilities.
  • VEPC Voice Excited Predictive Coder
  • MPE Multi-Pulse Excited Coder
  • RPE Regular Pulse Excited Coder
  • One object of this invention is thus to provide an efficient method for determining a voice pitch related information.
  • Another object of this invention is to provide a coder architecture wherein said pitch related information may be used to improve the speech signal coding scheme from an efficiency standpoint.
  • a digital process for determining a number representing pitch or an harmonic thereof and a digital speech coder are as claimed in claims 1 and 8, respectively.
  • the original speech signal is processed to derive therefrom a speech representative residual signal, compute residual prediction signal using long term prediction means adjusted by using pitch detection operations, then combine both current predicted residual to generate a residual error signal and code the latter using Pulse Excitation Coding techniques.
  • a significant improvement to the coding scheme efficiency is provided by detecting the pitch or an harmonic of said pitch (hereafter simply designated by pitch or pitch representative information or pitch related information) using dual-steps process including first a coarse pitch determination through peak detection, then followed by auto-correlation operations about the detected pitched peaks.
  • Figure 1 Block diagram of a Voice Coder using the invention.
  • Figure 2 speech representative waveforms.
  • FIGS 3 and 4 illustrations of the pitch detection process of the invention.
  • Figures 5 and 6 block diagrams of the coder.
  • Figure 7 block diagram of the decoder.
  • Figure 8 general block diagram for implementing the pitch determination.
  • Figure 9 block diagram of the algorithm for the selection of candidate values for pitch.
  • Figure 10 block diagram of the algorithm for the elimination of unsignificant values and averaging for the determination of the rough pitch value.
  • Figure 11 block diagram of the algorithm for the fine determination of the pitch value.
  • FIG. 1 Represented in figure 1 is a block diagram of a coder made to implement the invention.
  • the original speech signal s(n) sampled at Nyquist frequency and PCM encoded with 12 bits per sample is fed into an adaptive short term prediction filter (10) by consecutive blocks 160 samples long.
  • the filter equation in the z domain is of the form ⁇ a i . z -i (1)
  • the short term prediction filter is made of a conventional transversal digital filter the tap coefficients of which are the a i parameters.
  • the a i are derived by a step-up procedure in device 13 from so called PARCOR coefficients k(i) in turn derived from the original speech signal using a conventional Leroux-Guegen method and then coded with 28 bits using the Un/Yang algorithm.
  • PARCOR coefficients k(i) in turn derived from the original speech signal using a conventional Leroux-Guegen method and then coded with 28 bits using the Un/Yang algorithm.
  • the short term prediction filter is made to deliver a residual signal r(n) showing a relatively flat frequency spectrum, with some redundancy at a pitch related frequency.
  • a device (12) processes the residual signal to derive therefrom a pitch or harmonic representative data in other words, a pitch related information M and a gain parameter b to be used to adjust a long term prediction filter (14) performing the operations in the z domain as shown by the following equation. b.z -M (2)
  • the device for performing the operation of equation (2) should thus essentially include a delay line whose length should be dynamically adjusted to M (pitch or harmonic) and a gain device b. A more specific device will be described further.
  • a prediction residual signal output x(n) of the long term predictor filter is subtracted from the residual signal to derive a long term decorrelated prediction error signal e(n), which e(n) is then to be coded into sequences of pulses using any Pulse Excitation (PE) method.
  • PE Pulse Excitation
  • a PE device (16) is used to convert for instance each sub-group of 40 consecutive PCM encoded e(n) samples into a smaller number, say less than 15, of most significant pulses.
  • Either one of the MPE or RPE techniques could be used.
  • Lower the dynamic of e(n) is, more efficient its quantizing/coding at a given bit rate is.
  • M may either be representative of the pitch or of a pitch harmonic, i.e. it needs only be a pitch related parameter.
  • the new samples provided by device (16) are coded using two set of parameters, one characterizing each pulse position with respect to a significant reference, e.g. the beginning of the sub-block of forty samples being processed, the other one representing each pulse amplitude. Characterizing the pulse position is particularly critical and any error on said position would alter considerably the speech coding quality.
  • RPE the computing workload to be devoted to the pulses is lowered as compared to MPE but this assumes a slightly higher number of pulses (e.g. 13 to 15) is used to describe each sub-group of e(n) samples. Then a higher protection against line errors could be obtained with a lower number of bits.
  • each sub-group of 40 samples is split into interleaved sequences. For instance two 13 samples and one 14 samples long interleaved sequences.
  • the RPE device (16) is then made to select the one sequence among the three interleaved sequences again providing the least mean squared error. There is then no need to code each sample position. Identifying the selected sequence with two bits is sufficient. For further information on the RPE coding operation one may refer to the above cited Kroon reference.
  • the long term prediction associated with regular pulse excitation enables optimizing the overall bit rate versus quality parameter, more particularly when feeding the long term prediction filter (14) with a pulse train r ⁇ (n) as close as possible to r(n), i.e. wherein the coding noise and quantizing noise provided by device 16 and quantizer 20 have been compensated for.
  • decoding operations are performed in device (22) the output of which p ⁇ (n) is added to the predicted residual x(n) to provide a reconstructed residual r ⁇ (n) .
  • the closed loop structure around the RPE coder is made operable in real time by setting minimal and maximal limits to the pitch detection window as will be explained further.
  • LTP Long Term Predictor
  • b and M are determined four times over each block of 160 samples, using 40 samples (sub-window) and their 120 predecessors.
  • the device (12) fed with these data computes the long Term Prediction coefficient M as will be described later on and uses it to derive the gain coefficient b according to the following equation:
  • the method for determining M is essential not only to make the whole coder efficient from both quality and complexity standpoints, but also to make the long term prediction arrangement operable in real time. This is achieved by forcing M>N and by splitting the M determination process into two steps. A first step enabling a rough determination of a coarse pitch related M value requiring a fairly low computing power, is then followed by a fine M adjustment using auto-correlation methods over a limited number of values.
  • K being the sample rank index locating the peaks at multiples of rough M rate
  • Delta 5 for instance defining a number of sample locations about said pitched peaks.
  • the autocorrelation operation of equation (4) is operated between the 40 samples of sub-block (k) and 40 samples, the first of which is one of the autocorrelation zones samples, then jumping to the next autocorrelation zone. This enables thus saving on computing load.
  • the second step illustrated in figure 4 includes:
  • the value of Delta has been set to 5 and the autocorrelation zones limited to the three first coarse M spaced peaks.
  • a saving on data storage is achieved by using reconstructed shifted samples r'(n-k') instead of samples r(n-k') in relation (4) and by using samples r'(n) instead of samples r(n) in relation (3), as shown in figure 5.
  • Main Subroutine HPITCH deals with fine pitch and gain b determination through autocorrelation operations for fine pitch ( Figure 8).
  • FIG. 5 An implementation of Long Term Prediction filter (14) is represented in figure 5 (see figure 1 for similar references).
  • the reconstructed residual signal is fed into a 160 samples long delay line (or shift register) D L the output of which is fed into the LTP coefficients computing means(12) for further processing through cross-correlations with r(n).
  • a tap on the delay line DL is adjusted to the previously computed fine M value.
  • a gain factor b is applied to the data available on said tap, before being subtracted from r(n) as a residual prediction x(n) to generate e(n).
  • the long term predicted residual signal is thus subtracted from the residual signal to derive the error signal e(n) to be coded through Pulse Excitation device (16) before being quantized in quantizer (20).
  • Represented in figure 6 is a device implementing the RPE function as considered with the coder of figure 1.
  • the residual is low-pass filtered in (52) to a low bandwidth limited at 1,66 Khz.
  • each sub block of 40, x(n) samples is split in device (54) into three interleaved sequences X0, X1 and X2 as represented hereunder: Where "X" represents a non zero pulse taken among the x(n) samples.
  • the three pulse trains X0, X1 and X2 energies are computed, and the pulse train showing the highest energy is selected to represent the residual signal e(n) for the considered 40 samples long operating time window.
  • a two bits long parameter L is used to define the selected sequence X0, X1 or X2. This parameter is thus provided by the coder output four times every block of 160 samples.
  • the pulses selected are quantized into a sequence "X”. Therefore both L and "X" parameters define the e(n) coded signal.
  • block companded PCM techniques are used to encode the X sample sequence. These technique have been presented by A. Croisier et al in a presentation at the International Seminar on Digital Communications, Zurich 1974.
  • Each 40 samples long e(n) sequence is finally encoded into a characteristic term encoded with five bits and 13 or 14 samples each encoded with three bits.
  • the received data train is first demultiplexed in 70 to separate the various components (C, X, L, b, M and k(i) from each other.
  • C and X are used in a conventional BCPCM decoder to regenerate in (72) the e(n) pulse train the time position of which is adjusted with reference to the block time origin using the parameter L.
  • L enables setting an additional time delay to either zero, one or two sampling periods depending whether L indicates that the selected pulse train was X0 ⁇ , X1 or X2.
  • the decoded pulses p ⁇ (n) are then fed into an inverse long term prediction filter (74) the parameters of which are adjusted by b and M. These operations are performed every 40 samples, i.e. one sub-block window duration.
  • the inverse filter provides a decoded residual signal r ⁇ (n) fed into an inverse short term prediction filter (76) the coefficients of which are adjusted each 160 samples long period of time using the PARCOR coefficients k(i) (or the corresponding coefficients a(i)).
  • the decoded speech signal s ⁇ (n) is provided at the output of inverse short term filter (76).
  • the bits assignment have been made as follows: For each block of 20ms long speech signal section: which corresponds to a rate of 13 Kbps leaving 3 Kbps for error protection for a 16 Kbps coder.

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  • Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
  • Computational Linguistics (AREA)
  • Signal Processing (AREA)
  • Health & Medical Sciences (AREA)
  • Audiology, Speech & Language Pathology (AREA)
  • Human Computer Interaction (AREA)
  • Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
  • Acoustics & Sound (AREA)
  • Multimedia (AREA)
  • Compression, Expansion, Code Conversion, And Decoders (AREA)
  • Measurement Of Mechanical Vibrations Or Ultrasonic Waves (AREA)
EP87430006A 1987-03-05 1987-03-05 Pitch detection process and speech coder using said process Expired - Lifetime EP0280827B1 (en)

Priority Applications (5)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
EP87430006A EP0280827B1 (en) 1987-03-05 1987-03-05 Pitch detection process and speech coder using said process
ES198787430006T ES2037101T3 (es) 1987-03-05 1987-03-05 Procedimiento de deteccion de tono y codificador de voz que utiliza dicho procedimiento.
DE8787430006T DE3783905T2 (de) 1987-03-05 1987-03-05 Verfahren zur grundfrequenzbestimmung und sprachkodierer unter verwendung dieses verfahrens.
JP63008601A JP2505015B2 (ja) 1987-03-05 1988-01-20 ピツチ検出方法
US07/155,459 US4924508A (en) 1987-03-05 1988-02-12 Pitch detection for use in a predictive speech coder

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Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
EP87430006A EP0280827B1 (en) 1987-03-05 1987-03-05 Pitch detection process and speech coder using said process

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EP0280827A1 EP0280827A1 (en) 1988-09-07
EP0280827B1 true EP0280827B1 (en) 1993-01-27

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ES (1) ES2037101T3 (es)

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Also Published As

Publication number Publication date
JP2505015B2 (ja) 1996-06-05
DE3783905D1 (de) 1993-03-11
EP0280827A1 (en) 1988-09-07
JPS63223799A (ja) 1988-09-19
DE3783905T2 (de) 1993-08-19
ES2037101T3 (es) 1993-06-16
US4924508A (en) 1990-05-08

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